1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital camera for taking a motion picture by way of its image pickup device and recording the motion picture onto a recording medium, and in particular to a digital camera which can record an arbitrary frame of motion picture data as still picture data for printing.
2. Description of Related Art
According to the related art, in case a scene in a motion picture taken with a digital camera was to be printed, motion picture data recorded onto a recording medium was replayed and pause operation was made to display a still picture when a target scene was displayed, then the still picture was used as print data. Thus, in order to identify a scene to be printed, the user had to diligently perform operations such as fast forward, skip, pause and playback while watching the replay screen. This was very cumbersome. Further, it was quite difficult to identify a scene in motion picture data in units of frames.
In order to solve such problems, a digital camera described in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-320665 readily identifies a scene to be printed for later print instruction by performing frame-by-frame playback of motion picture data. The digital camera disclosed in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-320665 identifies on a per frame basis a print target scene in a motion picture file in advance and records the corresponding information together with the motion picture file onto a recording medium for selection of a scene from among the print target scenes in printing.
However, according to a system where motion picture data is replayed frame by frame such as on a digital camera disclosed in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-320665, it takes a very long time to locate a target scene from all the motion picture data recorded on a recording medium. Fast forward and skip operations must be diligently performed in order to shorten the time required to locate the target scene.
It is also necessary to separately prepare a management file which records information for identifying motion picture files and print target scenes and refer to the management file each time printing is made. This complicates the whole process.